New students move onto campus beginning Friday, August 18, and
classes begin for undergraduates on Tuesday, August 22. In all,
about 22,000 undergraduate and graduate students will move back
to the area in upcoming weeks.

Former President of UVA Robert O'Neil called the violence that
Charlottesville and the UVA community experienced "profoundly
different" than anything he has seen over the course of his
nearly 50 years in academia.

"I don't recall anything at all comparable," to the violence over
the weekend, O'Neil, who served as UVA's president from
1985-1990, told Business Insider.

O'Neil, who also served as president of the University of
Wisconsin, said he has received many "routine messages about the
start of the school year" but that one sent by UVA Law school
Dean Risa L. Goluboff to law school faculty stood out.
Goluboff wrote:

"My immediate and visceral reaction is revulsion. I am appalled
at the attempts of white supremacists to instill fear and provoke
violence in our community. Let me say with absolute clarity that
bigotry is abhorrent, that acts of racial intimidation and
violence are criminal, and that white supremacy is a doctrine of
terror, meant to insult, frighten, injure, and kill. There could
be no mistaking those messages this weekend, from Friday night's
march with torches on the Lawn to Saturday's loss of life and
beyond."

It was an "eloquent appeal for bringing the law school community
back together," O'Neil said.

White nationalists called a "Unite the Right" rally
last Saturday in response to a plan to remove a statue
of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park in
Charlottesville.

Apparent white supremacist James
Fields rammed his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing
32-year-old Heather Heyer. Two Virginia State Police also died
when their helicopter crashed as they were monitoring the
protests.

UVA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from
Business Insider.